


Red Sky at Morning

by Your_Bones



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Shipwreck, limited cast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Bones/pseuds/Your_Bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat had a very limited set of options. It was a difficult call between rotting on a deserted planet and preserving one of the biggest lumps of putrified behemoth leavings he'd ever had the pleasure to meet. </p><p>He made a practical choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If there is one person in the entire universe he didn't want to be stuck on a deserted planet with…

Well, on second thought, it’d probably be Vriska or the Condesce, but Equius horsefucking Zahhak was a close second. The good news was that he was pretty much at Karkat’s mercy, crumpled up on the floor with a troll’s length of chitinous shrapnel stabbing through his knee.

“What are you waiting for, mutant? T-This is what you wanted, isn't it? A chance to carry out your… repulsive way of life, unhindered b-by civilized--”

“Shut up! I don’t have a fucking ‘way of life’! Wanting to avoid getting brained by a drone is not a way of life!” Karkat shuddered and held a broken beam, thin and sharp, high over his head for emphasis.

“However you want to refer to your crimes, you've succeeded.” Zahhak propped himself up on one trembling arm, but, unable to drag his body forward without pulling on the gash in his leg, groaned and bowed his head like a fearful pawbeast. “I only ask that you make my culling brief.”

“Culling…” Karkat's eye twitched hysterically. “For fuck’s sake! Don’t you have a setting between talking shit and asking me to kill you? Is that in your goddamn vocabulary?” Dropping the beam in exasperation, Karkat gestured furiously enough to make his weary arms ache.

“W-We could debate semantics under… other conditions, but I am in significant pain--”

“Don’t talk to me about pain! I've been electrocuted six times in the last few days-- twice by you! You don’t have the privilege to bitch!”

There was a long, frigid quiet after that. Zahhak tried to wrench his leg free with both hands, but a sharp gasp and a badly-suppressed cry showed that his attempts were pointless. Karkat had to give him one thing: for somebody bleeding all over the place and pinned to the ground by his own shinbone, he hadn't so much as shed a tear. They must’ve really drilled that into his pan at seadweller cockgobbler training.

“...Very well. If you are lacking in the mental fortitude to cull me personally, you are welcome to take your chances leaving me with the craft.” The smug, slimy way he said that made Karkat’s hide crawl. This condescending prick had the globes to talk like he was still in control despite being crippled and half-dead at Karkat’s feet. He heaved the beam up over his head again, lining it up to meet with Zahhak’s over-inflated skull, and…  
Well, shit. He’d already passed out. Kind of ruined the moment, in Karkat’s opinion.

\----------

A three-man transport crew was plenty for one prisoner, they’d determined. Equius had been assigned by his seniors to mind the cockpit, making sure all the systems ran smoothly as the autopilot took them through a sparsely-explored star cluster. The others had stayed behind to guard the cargo, keeping him under bonds suitable for his feeble lowblood physiology as he awaited trial. He would be on charge of grand treason by way of evading imperial action, a very serious accusation. But practically speaking, it was, by all means, a routine voyage. Equius had even gone so far as to bring one of his personal projects along to pass the transit time.

When he noticed the discrepancy, his first thought was that the error was in his vision and not the instruments. An imperial skipper, recently inspected, would never fall into a planet’s gravitational pull. Its programming was far too advanced, and Equius had nothing but faith in the integrity of the hardware.

But when Equius opened the panel and manually triangulated their course, they were already being brought down into the upper atmosphere of an unnamed planetary body. Like a good technician, he worked diligently to try and regain control, but connections to the ship’s drive were severed shortly after the sensors went offline. They were flying blind, spiraling downward into an unknown world, and the rest of the crew was unresponsive to his calls for aid.

Equius left the cockpit to investigate the rest of the ship, including the prisoner. He found one comrade dead and the other bleeding out from the throat like some sort of freshly slaughtered game (morbid and uncouth though the comparison may be.) Reaching for his weapon, Equius was met with a pair of savage red eyes glaring at him obscenely through the darkness. The entire craft shook violently as they breached the planet’s air currents-- Equius smashed his head on the glass wall of the holding cell, and everything went black.

\----------

Shit. Just… shit. What was he supposed to do next? Sabotage had seemed like such a brilliant plan when Karkat was about to get a fork through his pan, but once he’d managed to crash the only means of transportation for several dozen parsecs, he realized that this might have been a poor choice of action. But he was still alive, and damn it, he had put too much time and energy into staying alive to let his investment fall through now. He could be the greatest Threshecutioner general who ever lived, he just had to get off this godforsaken rock and off to… someplace where everyone wasn't actively trying to murder him. Easy.

A sticky dampness starting to soak into his shoe reminded him that Zahhak was still there and still, tenuously, alive. Karkat winced and lifted his foot, trying to shake some of the blood off before it got into his sock, and began to wonder what he should do with the reeking asshole. Reasonably, he thought he should just leave him there. Even if Karkat didn't go to the trouble of killing him, he’d bleed out on his own in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Ugh, sick, he’d started making this messed up choking sound when he breathed. Even while dying, this guy couldn't stop being disgusting. Karkat gingerly turned Zahhak’s head to one side with his foot, sighing in relief when that stopped most of the noise. He stumbled over to the ship’s mostly-intact cabin and tried to pry the hatch open. Though he didn't know shit about spaceship mechanics, Karkat knew that the engine and all other important parts were in there. But as he tried to force the dented hinges apart, it occurred to him that even if he could get into the remains of the cockpit, the equipment inside would be completely worthless without… the other fifty percent or so that was lying in pieces around them.

He could barely lift one scrap of the rubble by himself, and even if he could, he had only a vague idea of where to put everything. There was no way he could make this piece of crap fly. What he needed was a beast of burden, plus an engineer capable of… Fuck. Suddenly, Zahhak’s bloody, sweaty carcass was a lot less repulsive and a lot more urgently compelling to him.


	2. Chapter 2

The column impaled through Zahaak’s knee weighed nearly as much as Karkat did, and he knew that once he moved it, the bleeding would get a lot worse a lot faster. So he got inventive, tilting the bulk of the weight over onto a smashed control panel and letting it pull Equius along abhorrently as it slipped. When he tried to wrench the leg free from this angle, it came loose a little easier than he’d thought, along with a gruesome, watery gasp from a troll who was supposed to be unconscious.

Karkat glanced down at Zahhak anxiously, waiting for him to start spewing his caste-based word diarrhea again. But he didn't. His eyes fluttered like they wanted to open, but he never seemed to focus on anything or get coherent enough to actually move. The crater in his knee bubbled up blood like a well; Karkat didn’t have the bilesack to watch for long, so he took a generous handful of the damp rags from under a ruined panel and wrapped them around the breadth of the entire joint. He pulled them tight only to see that they were already soaked through-- god, how much blood did the bastard have in him?

Unsure if the air outside was breathable or not (sure, the lights labelled ‘atmosphere’ all flashed a generous purple, but Karkat didn't trust any equipment left on this interstellar turd,) he dragged Zahhak by the wrists into the next chamber, where they had slightly more undestroyed floor space to work with. It was here that Karkat really grasped how relatively little he knew about medicine, but at least this ship had been provided a small first aid kit to care for its less disposable occupants.

Mopping at the gash on Zahhak’s forehead-- he’d been so distracted by the gigantic chunk out of his leg that he’d nearly missed all the other, slightly less revolting injuries-- Karkat thought about how objectively stupid this was. If he did survive, unlikely though it seemed, there was no guarantee Equius would help him. Hell, there was no guarantee that he wouldn't strangle Karkat as soon as his bloodpusher had enough fluids to work right again. Unlike Karkat, Equius didn’t need help to get off this planet. In fact, the only thing they had in common was that trusting one another with more than a cholerbear’s diseased anus would be an immensely terrible idea.

Yet there he was, trying to keep sweatlord mcdouchenugget alive on the prison ship he’d piloted himself. In his defense, this wasn't how he planned for this to turn out. Karkat’s idea was to cause a small malfunction to get the guards’ attention, then take them all out, commandeer the vessel, and book it the fuck out of there. It was a perfectly sound plan for somebody being dragged to his certain, gristly doom! But Karkat knew that he wouldn't get anything done fantasizing about how far away from Her Condesce’s fleets he could be right now. His best bet, miserable as it was, would be to stay put with the ship’s life support and... well, this fucker.

At least Equius was always one of those ‘I am in your debt, pray let me prostrate myself before your magnificent bulge’ types. For once, maybe the highbloods’ general horseshittery will be useful to him. If he can convince this asshole that he owes Karkat-- which he does-- maybe he can put him to work without any unnecessary ordeal.

\----------

Once he’d done the best he could do in terms of stitching and bandaging, Karkat decided to try and assess just how deep in the shit they were. He braved the porthole first, peering out with his fingertips gingerly feeling the glass for cracks. Outside was the last thing he could have ever imagined, something that even a troll with minimal astronomical knowledge knew was statistically impossible.

They were plants, or at least, something plantlike in appearance, covered in flat fronds radiating from thick trunks and apparently stationary. Alien life was not news to anybody. Hell, the Alternian armies had already razed dozens of civilizations and hundreds, if not thousands, of habitable planets. Still, the likelihood of finding one at absolute random in the void of space was…

Well, he used to know a guy who talked about miracles. He was a psychotic shitstain, no questions asked, and the crap he spewed never stood out as anything more than the kind of wiggler babbling one does when wasted out of their pan. But Karkat had to admit, for the first time in his life, he might've just caught a glimpse of the kind of stupid, unbelievable luck that useless wastechute used to rant about.    

He watched the extra-Alternian life forms suspiciously for several minutes, waiting for something to spring up and eat something else. To do something wholesome and normal. But nothing moved save for a general soft swaying, which suggested wind. So it was feasible that someone might be able to walk this planet’s surface without dying instantaneously, but this strange quietness and cyan-tinted coloration of the earth was disturbing to him on a deeply personal scale.

Karkat decided he would delay any attempts to venture outside.

\----------

By the second time Zahhak regained consciousness, Karkat had already gone over every inch of the hull in search of cracks or fissures. Amazingly, it had held, its ventilation systems still running and protecting against the foreign atmosphere. There were emergency rations and water reserves, and Karkat heard somewhere that helmsfluid, though mildly hallucinogenic, was potable. So they probably weren’t going to die within the next few nights. Things were looking up!

...Marginally, but still, it was a leader’s job to keep a cool head in bad situations. Even situations as surreal as the first sunrise on an alien planet, when Zahhak woke up screaming.

“Zahhak, shut your gaping squawk blister. I--”

“Aurthour!”

“...The hell did you just call me?” Karkat crept up on the cramped atrium where he left the oversized freak, picking out a faint gasping, sobbing noise. “You better not lose it. I swear, you’re already one step away from getting thrown out of this flying sack of slurry.”

Zahhak didn’t reply, just turned over onto his side and moaned loudly. Getting a tenuous closer look, he saw that the blueblood’s eyes were open but glassy, filled with a kind of dim terror that broadcasted how he wasn't mentally… _all there_. Karkat was wary of approaching the sweaty creep, so he hung back, just out of arm’s reach, to watch Zahhak flounder on the floor and try vainly to pick himself up.

“Aurthour, please, I can’t… I can’t stand! Help-- I don’t want to be culled!” The fear in his voice, punctuated by bouts of heavy, labored breathing, was enough to make Karkat nauseous. Some hardened military mechanic!

On closer inspection, Karkat could see that all the color had bled out of his face, and he was shaking a little whenever he tried to move. Though it was more appealing to him to think of this is some kind of musclepan mental breakdown, it was becoming obvious that it was more of a physiological episode. Which meant that Karkat probably had to touch him. Wonderful. He’d already sewn up every cut on the ungrateful bastard’s body, what else could he do?

Reluctantly bending down closer to him, Karkat slapped the side of his head lightly and hissed. “Hey. Hey. Get your shit together. I’m not your creepy lusus.”

“Ihh… It hurts…” Before Karkat had the chance to bolt, Equius had grabbed him, snatching his wrist and pulling him down with alarming force.

“Fuck! Let go! This isn't part of the goddamn deal!” Karkat tried to pry himself loose, but Equius already had a good hold on him, sluggishly dragging him closer. Surprisingly, Karkat didn't feel any bones snapping; despite having him in a death grip, Equius was evidently being very careful not to crush Karkat’s hand. Somehow that was more unsettling to him than just getting his fingers broken.

“...Please.” Delirious and slow, Equius tugged Karkat down on the blood-flecked floor and just kind of… put his head on Karkat’s knee. Not necessarily violent or even lewd, he just rested there and gave a long, ragged exhale.

Naturally, Karkat kicked him in arm, shoulder, neck, a little bit in the head-- but he was surprisingly hard to move. It was like hitting a brick wall: even if he did bruise up a bit, he didn't flinch or show much sign of discomfort. Horrified, Karkat realized that he was more or less pinned. Even if he could work his hand free, Equius was too heavy to move from this position. It took him the better part of an hour just to get the behemoth from one room to the next.

He’d love to pop Equius’ eyes like overripe grapes, sure, but that would probably get in the way of his emergency flight plan. So, resigned to his fate, Karkat swallowed anxiously and hoped the disgustingly cool body in his lap wouldn't… get any closer. Equius made a dim grumbling sound and closed his eyes, clinging to Karkat like a damp, shaky wiggler. He wasn't looking good on the not-dying front.

Exhausted and rattled from his own brush with demise, Karkat thought that, just for a second, a twisted and bizarre idea flitted across his think pan. A thought he didn’t want to give any merit to by acknowledging it any further. A thought that, in a mangled, asinine way, Equius almost looked **pitiful**.


	3. Chapter 3

Pinned on a metal floor, under nearly a metric ton of excessively buff asshole, was not Karkat’s ideal sleeping position. But even he could only subsist on sheer fury and terror for so long at a time. He must’ve fallen asleep somewhere in the early morning, because by the time he woke up, the ship was flooded with intense, unsettlingly blue sunlight.

As he writhed beneath the crushing weight, he gasped for breath until he was able to scrabble free. Looking back at Equius, he suppressed a shudder and wobbled to his feet, dusting himself off. He was functionally alone, which seemed like a great thing, until he realized that this meant being stuck with his own thoughts, and with that his own extensive understanding of just how badly he’d screwed the pawbeast here.

At least they had water. The ship took off with enough rations to sustain four people for days of flight, plus emergency supplies to last for a week or two as long as they were used judiciously. He rubbed at his cracked throat and stumbled to the ship’s mangled remains of a galley, shoving the limp sliding door back into its socket to get in.

When Karkat turned on the tap, though, his blood ran cold. It was brown, with a noxious chemical smell and a greasy sheen to it. His bilesack turned; it was difficult to look at, and drinking it was out of the question. Karkat tried letting the water run to flush out whatever impurity had filtered in, but it only poured out fouler and fouler until he was forced to stop it to keep himself from gagging. The water supply was ruined.

He had to resort to an archaic ink and paper text to try and figure out what the problem was: according to the manual, the water tank and the batteries used to support crisis communication were right next to each other. It seemed likely that the tank had ruptured and gotten contaminated with battery acid, making the water (and everything it touches) extremely toxic. Great. Some of it had seeped out into the food storage, too-- Karkat hurried to get the remaining crates and canisters out of there and into a dry alcove. There was nothing he could do about the water, though. Even if he used the hoofbeast wonder over there to open the tank, they had no means of purifying the contents. They were stranded in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and their little vacation just went from three weeks to three or four nights, maximum. Probably less for Equius.

Karkat spent several minutes contemplating the circumstances of his death. He could eat all the rations and die stuffed like the cooked waterbird he is, but they were just a bunch of dry mixes and pastes, nothing really appetizing. He could try and find something sopor-based and get so fucked up he wouldn't care about the dehydration, but who knows if it’d last long enough for the horrible dying part. Writing his memoirs seemed too cliche, and besides, what kind of sad, sick bastard would want to read that? It seemed like there wasn't much left to do but wait.

He waited a long time. Hours. The sun started to go down. Karkat was starting to wonder just how much time he would have alone with himself. A part of him almost wished Equius would wake up, just so he could have one final ‘I told you so’ brand fuck-you. That’d be nice. But instead he just laid there, breathing noisy and shallow, while Karkat got thirstier and more anxious by the minute.

Eventually he decided to get a good look at his alien landscape before he died. Hey, maybe the people who found their corpses would name this horrible rock for them: “planet Zahaak and the hideous mutant he culled before dying” had a nice ring to it. He stood by the window and gazed out at the suspiciously motionless plants, the pristine, black sky full of foreign stars, the glimmer of water in the… wait. What? His stomach twisted at the sight. It was a lake. Or a big pond, like hell did he know the difference. What mattered was that it, for all intents and purposes, appeared like water.

Nerves frayed from sitting around in anticipation of his doom, Karkat acted fast. He found an empty food canister, he clambered into one of the oversized protective suits, he sealed the least shitty helmet he could find and marched out into the dark with a mission.

\----------

The ship wasn't capsized so much as tilted slightly to one side; it was also, however, buried in a sizable crater that blocked the normal docking station on its underside. Apparently the landing gear hadn't even made an effort. There was a hatch on the roof of the cockpit meant for emergency exits, along with the saddest closet-sized airlock he’d ever seen. It, like his entire plan up to this point, would have to do.

Decompression took longer than he expected, and gave him more and more time to think about how stupid this was. How did he know the spacesuit was airtight? It sure as hell didn't fit him. But the hatch popped open with an eerie hiss before he had time to come up with something better, and then it was just him and the cold, quiet surface of the unnamed planet.

\----------

His first steps on the alien world weren't steps so much as… somersaults. Karkat had underestimated how slippery the hull of the ship would be after travelling hundreds of parsecs through untold amounts of dusty, asteroids and other space debris. Landing roughly on his side, Karkat had to flounder around for a second before heaving himself up on all fours. The edges of the impact site were lined with hardened soil, but just beyond the surprisingly shallow crater, there was nothing but a soupy, sticky mud to look forward to. Boy, he sure did hope horrible extralternian parasites couldn't get through shitty spacesuits.

Eventually he managed to flop, roll and wade his way to the silty shore, kneeling down to examine the water carefully. He could easily see the bottom, even in the strange light of the gigantic, bilious moon. Swallowing anxiously, Karkat held the container beneath the surface and waited impatiently for the bubbles to stop. He’d do some sightseeing later, when he was sure he had the necessities for life nailed down.

That’s when he noticed the hole.

It was a thin tear, right above the crook of his elbow, hissing conspicuously with the rhythm of the oxygen pumps. Karkat froze; he could feel the air rushing past his arm and out of the suit. Decompression. The atmosphere of the foreign planet was already seeping into his suit-- for all he knew, he was breathing sulfur gas without even realizing it! Karkat panicked, yanking the jar out of the water and scrambling back toward the ship. Wait, wasn't he supposed to be saving oxygen? Hell if he knew. He was not a survivalist, even on his own horrible planet.

By the time he made it out of the mire, Karkat was pretty sure he ought to be dead. Or at least, he would if the atmosphere was toxic. The sound of rushing air had petered out, leaving him with a strange, stunned quiet as he stumbled back toward the ship. He was breathing. He was breathing and his lungs hadn't turned inside-out or anything. Lightheaded with either relief or suffocation, he knelt in the hardened soil and started laughing hysterically.

This was it. The single most fucked up, unbelievable hunk of bullshit he’d ever seen. His suit was worthless, and he was alive. Out of all the untold billions and billions of celestial bodies that the Alternian empire’s traversed, they had stumbled upon the one in a hundred thousand that was habitable.

\----------

Karkat went through the motions with the airlock, but he knew it was pointless now. He hauled himself into the ship desperately, thirstier and more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. Peeling the heavy suit off in mid-stride, he staggered to the strange alcove of an engine room and looked around warily. There. It’d have to do.

He ended up using a shitty, overheating piece of hardware as a burner. That strategy wouldn't last him long, he knew, but it was hot enough to boil the water. For ten minutes, at least. (Hey, he’d gone this far into becoming history's worst shipwreck survivor, he refused to give himself the opportunity to contract horrible diarrhea death.)

The water was piss-warm and tasted awful, lousy with what he could only pray was minerals, but for the first time since landing, he was feeling vaguely optimistic. Karkat even shared some of his find with Equius, mostly by dumping it over his mouth and taking his choking as yet another glorious ‘close enough’.

Equius stirred, eyes cracked open as he muttered soundlessly.

“Zahaak, you better not start that delusional shit again, I am in no mood--”

“Lowblood.” Unfortunately, he'd gotten his personality back.

“What?” Worse, Karkat would apparently answer to that without question.

“We… need to talk.” So much for that optimistic streak.


	4. Chapter 4

“No shit.” Karkat spat, kneeling down a few paces from Equius. He knew by this point what he should have known the entire time: to stay wary, circling around well out of Zahhak’s reach.

“What do you want from me?” Equius looked more present this time, a grim expression slowly spreading over his face as if he was beginning to grasp his predicament.  

“I don’t want to spend any more time on this festering anal pustule of the stars than you do.” Mercifully, Zahhak was still apparently too exhausted to bitch and moan about his language.

“I demand you be more specific. I don’t have the energy for this foolishness.” It was hard to sound authoritative in Equius’ condition: so hard, in fact, that he completely failed.

“Fuck, it’s hard to hear you over all those bulges thrashing around in your mouth.” Wonderful. Through all the pain, blood loss and general near-death experiences that would have been cull-able offenses back in civilization, Equius still fought through to be the same pretentious dick he’s always been. “Here, I’ll lay it out so even that mass of protein powder you call a brain can process it. I’m not an engineer, I admit it. No idea how to fix this piece of shit. But if either of us ever want to leave, you’re gonna have to pull some last-minute repairs out of your ass.”

“So, you’re… extorting me?” It sounded like a scene from some sundry novella, only without the inevitable blackrom face-sucking. In this sense, Karkat felt like luck was still, for once in his life, tilted in his favor.

“Yeah, basically. Not gonna candy-coat it.”

“And you expect me to just obey your orders, to… to accept leadership from such a lower echelon of trollkind?” Choking back a wet cough, Equius flattened his hands on the floor and pushed himself up, as if trying to make his prone shivering look more dignified. Though his face wasn’t touching the ground anymore, it was only a marginal improvement. “I can survive unassisted on this planet. My injuries are only a temporary setback, but your… perversion of the hemospectrum is irredeemable.”

“Fuck, you’re condescending! You don’t have a choice, nookwipe. Either you help me or I’ll stop doing all these nice little things like changing your bandages. You know, the shit that kept you from dying in the first place!” Equius subtly edged toward a protruding pipe, and Karkat didn’t hesitate to get between him and the potential weapon. Not knowing whether or not he could swing it right made no difference in Karkat’s opinion.                                                      

“I would prefer death over the shame of fraternizing with a degenerate like you.” There was that unwavering resolve the Empress’ legion was famous for. If Karkat weren’t worried about conserving food, he’d puke.

“That’s literally the dumbest thing I’ve heard in days-- and I've had to listen to the ramblings of a Faygo humping clownfucker!” He tossed a dry ration package in front of Equius unceremoniously, glowering down at him. “Get over your grubfisted stupidity and eat something before your bilesack digests itself. So sayeth your new captain.”

 

\----------

 

The notion of escape seemed foolhardy at best, and suicidal at worst. Karkat entertained it anyway, driven by desperation and the sheer force of having literally nothing left to lose. Turning his back on Zahhak for any length of time was worrying, but Karkat had to do something about… well, the bodies.

It’s not that he enjoyed thrusting a shiv of frayed wires into someone’s chitinous windhole, that’s just how it went down. Between that poor schmuck and the girl who got her pan crushed by a fallen beam, Karkat now had two very dead bluebloods to deal with. Dead was dead, and these guys were the same as raw meat in most aspects, but Karkat still considered himself above the archaic and disgusting practice of cannibalism. Which was noble and all, but left him at a frustrating loss for what to do with the carcasses.

Tossing them out the airlock was the obvious course of action, though Karkat feared that doing so would attract native animal life. The last thing they needed was to bait the local predators and give them a taste for troll.(Not to mention, the inevitable decomposition.) So, eventually, he formulated a solid plan, waiting for Zahhak to wane into unconsciousness again before slipping past him to enact his grisly work.

He dragged the corpses out of the emergency hatch one at a time-- it was less ‘carrying’ them and more frantic, irate shoving as he cursed both their lusii and the fluid that spawned them-- but eventually managed to roll them down the ship’s chassis and into the dirt below. It was here in the wide, shallow crater that he realized these stiffs did still have some less gruesome resources to offer. Karkat reluctantly pulled their uniforms from them, which took even more fumbling and swearing to navigate, removing the bulk of their clothes for who-knows-what practical purpose they might serve. Though he had come this far, he decided to leave them with their undergarments: not so much for any gesture of respect as the fact that he did not want to wrangle a couple nude cadavers into the ditch below the next hill.

By the time he got them both that far, (the ship was still well within eyesight, of course; desperate and stupid aren’t the same thing,) Karkat was panting and wheezing from the effort, but he knew he still had work to do. He took a piece of debris to serve as a makeshift shovel, long and roughly curved, from what he thought was some part of the landing gear. Then he began the arduous process of dumping loose soil and gravel into the ditch. This way, he reasoned, the bodies would be well away from their living space but also covered enough that they would hopefully neither reek nor attract wildlife. To top it off, he lugged several rocks of various size and threw them down on top of the loose mound to deter any attempts to dig it up. And that was the end of Zahhak’s skeezy crewmates, a cerulean male with crooked horns and a darker blue female who was, to put it nicely, hard to identify after the crash had smashed her face in. Once upon a time, a girl he knew had told him about how ancient trolls used to sing chants or tell flattering stories about those who’d died. They agreed it was a silly, pointless ritual, and Karkat wondered why it even crossed his mind as he chucked one more rough stone into the pit.

As he clambered back into the ship, Karkat felt strangely empty, and not just from physical and mental exhaustion. He was filthy, toting two blood-soaked outfits over his shoulder as he dropped down into the ruins of the cockpit. Letting the clothes fall at his side, he paused, noticing a faded cobalt smear on the metal flooring of the hall. Equius was not where he left him.

 

\----------

 

“Zahhak, I swear, you are the rancid, caked-on slime refuse at the bottom of an emptied filial pail!” Karkat stormed through the narrow corridors, made narrower by the dents caving in a couple walls. It wasn’t hard to find Equius: the ship’s interior was overall no bigger than the area of a midblood hive, and aside from that, he’d left a trail of bloody speckles all the way across the chamber.

“What are you doing?! You tore your stitches, that’s just… it’s the most stupidly masochistic thing I’ve ever seen! No, not even that: masochists want to live, you’re just sitting there fondling your shame globes when there’s literally not enough blood in you to fill out your bulge!” He was slumped over a battered console, tapping at the keys listlessly between his bouts of stifled breathing. “ **Equius**! Stop. What’s wrong with you, you’re gonna--”

The massive troll turned his head toward Karkat, eyes bulging with a watery, stricken kind of lucidity as he mumbled.

“...The H-Helmsman.” Karkat’s face fell as Equius began typing again, his bloodpusher trembling nauseously as he thought of what horror must be on board with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the sporadic schedule of this fic-- school, holidays and other personal stuff really does a number on me. Thanks to everyone who's still reading!


	5. Chapter 5

“Helmsman?! This thing has-- I mean, where-- how?!” Karkat sputtered, trying to put together the right line of accusations in the right order. It was stupid to ask whether or not the ship had a helmsman: it was common knowledge that a vessel couldn’t break light speed without one. He took a deep breath and tried again. “How the fuck can you forget to mention that little detail?! Oh, a live troll entombed up to their spinal crevice in formaldehyde in the deepest pit of this flying hellhole? No big deal!”

“Be quiet! I’m trying to access it.” Equius squinted at the keys for a second and closed his eyes before starting to type again. The panel didn’t have any sort of screen or display; he was punching in numbers from memory.

“Gee, thanks. I might not have wrapped my pan around that if you didn’t explain.” Leaning around Equius’ enormous side, Karkat watched him intently, partly out of anxious curiosity and partly to make sure he wasn’t trying any horseshit. “So is it alive or not?”

“I don’t know! Let me think,” he barked, his voice harsher and firmer than it had been in days. Karkat kept relatively silent as Equius worked. Finally, a panel in the wall popped open with a long hiss and a gush of foul-smelling fluid. Karkat held his breath, staring in despite his creeping suspicion that no adult troll could comfortably fit through a hatch that size.

Inside, there was a thick pedestal, encrusted in softly pulsating fuschia tendrils. The veins all led up into a singular cluster, weaving their thin tips together to form a slimy mass that clung to the wall behind it. There was no sign of an actual person in the tumorous lump, and the closet-sized chamber was much too small to accommodate anyone more than a couple sweeps old.

“What the fuck is this?” Karkat couldn’t even be clever about it; as he stared at the quivering thing in this tiny metal cabinet, the words just failed him. Stomach heaving, Karkat had to back away before the stench and the visceral pounding made him vomit.

“It’s the Helmsman.” Equius’ tone was neat and detached. Somehow, that was even more nauseating to Karkat than it would be if he had any glint of emotion, even if it were malicious.

“That thing? I thought Helmsmen were supposed to be, you know… trolls.” There was a dreadful pause, in which the crushing quiet made Karkat feel profoundly stupid, and that only fed into the frustration and tension of the scene.

“This is what they call a truncated model: everything but the brain and central nervous system are removed.” Equius slipped his hand into the reeking capsule, gently pushing some of the dripping tentacles away to reveal a brain crisscrossed with wires and electrodes.

“Is it even alive anymore?” Karkat’s eyes bulged as he chewed his lip. “Does it… think?” The way it kept moving on its own was distressing to watch, but he couldn’t look away.

“I’m not one to say. Most of the programmers I’ve spoken to claim that this type of Helmsman is just a mindless battery: it doesn’t have any sensory input, and it doesn’t feel pain.” It struck him as odd that someone in the engineering corps, especially Equius of all people, would bother learning about that.

“Why would they do this? It’s not enough just to wire up some poor sap from nub to bulge, they have to carve him up like a 12th Perigee’s Eve gobblebeast?” Karkat watched queasily as Equius started pushing loose IVs back into the lump of tissue, tracing out minute spots before piercing the tendrils with hair-thin needles.

His hands surprisingly steady and confident, Equius replied mechanically. “This setup is more efficient. Cut Helmsman may last nearly twice as long as their intact counterparts, though they lack the… power and reliability of a true vessel.” Something in the nearby console whirred and hummed, making Karkat jump. For some unfathomable reason, he was even more on edge than usual.

“Well, is it gonna work?” Karkat gave an impatient squirm, muttering sharply. “What, exactly, are our chances of applying a burnish to this piping heap of excrement?”

“It’s still alive,” Equius replied, “and does not seem to have sustained any critical damage.” Fuck, Karkat really wished he’d just stop touching that mess. For such a prude, Equius always had a stronger stomach than Karkat would’ve expected-- but then again, it’s hard to be one of Her Condescension’s fighting dogs if you’re squeamish about blood.

“Well hurry up and fix the rest of this thing. Start with… I dunno, that hole in the floor.” There was no fucking way he’d let this turdblossom drive, of course-- he’d be nice and safe in the brig that used to hold Karkat till he could be dumped on the nearest semi-inhabited star system. They would both live through this. If nothing else, Karkat was a man of his word. “Don’t forget that I’m your best chance at getting back to your... battalion, or unit, or whatever pedantic bullshit you’re calling your little orgies out there.”

“That’s not how it works. The chassis of the ship can be fixed, the wiring replaced, but if the Helmsman dies it would all be pointless.” Finally, Equius let go of the slimy thing, wiping his hand on the less-bloody leg of his uniform before closing the panel and leaning on it with a deep, crackling breath. “We need to change the filter, refill the fluid, and conserve power. That’s the important part: if the life support fails, the Helmsman dies almost immediately.”

“Yeah, because he doesn’t have a bloodpusher or anything else to keep him alive!” Despite having only known about the ‘cut Helmsmen’ for a few minutes, Karkat was already poking all sorts of holes in the practice.

“We should shut off the lights, air recycling, and everything else immediately. If the ship is ever operational again, the Helmsman will provide the charge needed to make an interstellar jump.” It sounded so simple when Equius said it like that, but Karkat knew better. Sure, it was easy to glaze over that part about going without power for who fucking knows long.

“So you’re saying we should just live like animals?” Karkat snorted at the thought-- one crawl through the mud on this dim hellscape was enough for him. “Just… use the ship to keep our globes from freezing off in the wind and fucking sit around with our fronds in our hands?”

“I wouldn’t put it in such… terms, but yes. Our best chance of escape… no, our only chance of escape is to save every joule of power for the Helmsman.” The first thing Karkat thought of was the water situation, then the heat, then the… uncomfortably close place he left the bodies. This wasn’t inconvenient, this was gross at best and dangerous at worst.

“Fan-fucking-tastic. And how do I know you didn’t just choke out this festering stream of word vomit as some kind of half-nubbed ploy?” Karkat loomed over Equius sternly, rapping his hand on the panel to make sure it was closed. “Despite all signs that say otherwise, I’m not stupid enough to give you any a used nasal discharge dredge’s worth of clout around here. You’re a glorified hostage, remember?”

“You were the one who insisted we had a common goal in getting off this planet.” Equius sagged against the battered metal siding, trying to push himself up with his injured leg and gasping in pain at his mistake. “I would be fool… foolish of me to mislead you in this matter.” The only thing worse than talking to this guy like they were somehow mental equals was doing so and being forced to admit he was **right**.

“Well, since you’re being so civil and helpful for the time being, I have a surprise for you.” Grabbing Equius by the shoulders, Karkat started trying to drag him, even though it was backbreaking to move him before and it would become impossible should he provide any resistance. “You get your very own accommodations! A-- fuck me, you’re heavy-- a hive away from hive, every bit as good as your creepy sex dungeon of a mansion back on Alternia.”

“It should be obvious by now--” Though he struggled to breathe slouched over this way, Equius still snarled. “--T-That I would’ve already killed you if I could.” He stopped to shudder and kick ineffectually when Karkat ‘accidentally’ banged his head against a wall. “You are being hysterical.” Physical strength was no contest, even in his miserable condition, but Karkat had mobility and resources on his side. The best fistfighter in Her Condescension’s navy was no match for a quick hand with a loaded weapon.

“I know, that seems to be a running problem with irrational lowbloods like me.” There were, however, several glaring problems with keeping Zahhak locked up, appealing though the idea may be. For instance, even if the cell doors would remain locked without power, they’d have to fire up the generator every time they wanted to open or close the doors-- an enormous waste of energy. To add to the problem, Equius’ heart abruptly crapping out on them was a very real possibility, and the inability to get to him quickly and revive him could mean Karkat losing his engineer.

He surrendered to just taking a pair of primitive mechanical handcuffs from the locker by the cell and finagling Zahhak into them; mostly through a combination of his practiced sleight of hand, exploiting the guy’s slipping consciousness, and a couple well-placed threats to make him eat his own bulge. Karkat left Equius propped up against the wall by the cell, watching him for a while to ensure he’d actually passed out. For a few moments, there was calm. Quiet. An opportunity to think and consider the legitimate possibility of getting off this load gaper of a planet.

And that’s when he first heard the heavy footsteps outside.


End file.
